


then, the war

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Character Study, F/M, Gen, One-Sided Relationship, World War II, occupation of france, scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 10:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15970700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: thirteen scenes from the 1940 occupation of France.





	then, the war

**I**

It begins with a kind of shaking, a tremble, deep down in the bones of the earth. Éponine Thenardier wakes with a start, her blankets tangled around her legs and the dawn dribbling down the muslin blinds. She pushes herself upright, spits coarse dark hair out of her mouth. Her braid swings over her shoulder; the photograph on the dresser keeps shaking, minutely; it grows, builds, piles up on itself until the photograph and her floor is rattling, and there is the jangle of a harness, the roar of machinery, the stomp of boots, imposing itself on the morning. She opens her curtains, peers out of the window, but she cannot see anything over the high wall at the end of the garden.

Dressing quickly, she ties her hair up under her cap, dashes down the stairs and almost runs into Monsieur, coat and hat and gun in hand.

“Whoa, steady,” he says, his hand finding her shoulder as she skids to a stop to avoid him. She finds her balance, steps back, bobs the little curtsey he’s been trying to get her to stop doing ever since they came from Paris, but Éponine clings to her habits the way she used to cling to any crust of bread thrown her way, stubborn and fierce. “Good morning. Is my daughter awake?”

“I was jus’ goin’ to prepare Mademoiselle’s tray,” Éponine brushes her hands on her skirts. “She ‘asn’t rung yet, but no way anyone could sleep through the noise. You don’t mind me askin’, sir, what _is_ it?”

He sighs. “I’m afraid, Éponine, it’s not good news.”

Éponine hasn’t listened to the news or read a paper since her friends disappeared to the front. What’s the point of words when there was less and less bread in Paris every day and hunger made the newsprint swim, loose and blurry, in front of her eyes? What’s the point of words when all they are going to tell you is that your friends are dead, and you are stuck scamming and fucking and diving beneath the fists of your parents and your clients and the law enforcement? They’d said the 20th century was supposed to be happy, was supposed to be free, but all Éponine has ever reckoned is that happiness is always for those who can afford it, freedom for those who aren’t chained to circumstance and the relentless search for food. The 20th century is a century like all others, with its rises and falls, and there will always be the poor and hungry and desperate to whom time blurs in a whirling kaleidoscope of brown and grey and bright hot red. Now her fancy political friends are gone, Éponine can’t be bothered to keep up with the whys and wherefores of the war and the grand games of people so far above her in the social hierarchy that they might as well be buried in the clouds. All she knows is that now, working for Monsieur Valjean and his daughter (because she won’t accept charity, she _won’t,_ not with the history that unspools, thick and unsaid, like a rug one is prone to tripping over between them), she gets three nearly-square meals a day and an actual bed to sleep in and a garden with flowers in which to spend her afternoon off. The war rumbles on the horizon, her friends might be dead, but for the first time, Éponine knows what it means to be _happy._

She watches the grey cast of Monsieur’s face, the set of his lips. “it’s the Germans. They’ve arrived.”

**II**

They’ve been watching the exodus for weeks, Cosette sitting in the garden or her window-seat with the heat clutching around her, Éponine with her basket on her arm in the village square. The refugees poured in, wide-eyed and gaunt, stumbling over broken promises and lost loved ones and the lies of a government that could not keep them safe.

Cosette thinks of her mother, and another war, and a man who didn’t come back. No-one has told her he fled for safety in America, that he didn’t die at the front like the hero they’ve always pretended he was. To be honest, Valjean wouldn’t even know what had happened to him had there not been desperate ‘return-to-sender’ letters addressed to some humid paradise on the west coast of the United States left in the little box of Fantine’s worldly possessions.

Éponine thinks of a golden-haired man with fire blazing in every line of him, thinks of his scowling, cynical shadow, thinks of the little group, the smiles they always carried for her when she slipped, minnow-quick, into the back room of the Musain, then she tries not to think at all. No-one has told her that the only reason they really kept her around was that a woman could go places they couldn’t, people would let things slip in the face of a gap-toothed smile and bright eyes and a face still a little pretty after years on the street. It’s an obvious truth, to anyone who looked closely enough, but then again, Éponine never cared to, and isn’t it better to lie, to pretend that you had friends who’ll think about you sometimes when they’re fighting for their lives against the sudden and terrifying onslaught of the German army?

Sometimes, Cosette comes into the kitchen and sits with Éponine and Toussaint whilst Éponine washes the clothes, her reddened hands scrubbing linen and wool in soapy water, and Toussaint cooks, singing tunelessly. Éponine looks at Cosette, at the black curls carefully gathered back, the light spilling from smooth brown skin, the little rosebud mouth and clean cotton dress, and wonders: would things have been different? Would fate have taken a different turn? Or are they pacing the lives laid out for them, laid taut like tightropes, one wrong step and you’ll fall?

The thought skitters across her brain, startling her, and dives back into whatever crevasse it came from. No use thinking about that now, she tells herself. What’s done is done. That’s the way it’s always meant to be.

**III**

They are assigned an officer. He walks into the hallway with his aide, a pale young man, clicks his heels together – “apparently it’s polite in Germany,” Cosette tells Éponine after, for lack of anyone else to tell – and greets them in a quiet, gentle voice, his French impeccable.

“Pontmercy?” Valjean’s eyebrows go up. “That’s a French name.”

“My grandfather was French,” Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy says. Éponine watches his eyes flicker to Cosette, the way Cosette’s eyes have not left the floor.

[“I don’t like this Occupation business, but we must keep quiet and keep our heads down,” Valjean had told them, Cosette sitting demurely in her armchair, Éponine hovering by the fire. “There is no point earning anyone’s animosity, our countrymen or the invaders.”

 _So says someone who doesn’t have anyone fighting,_ Éponine thinks to herself. In her head, her friends are running towards bullets fired from guns just like these.]

“Ah.”

“I shall endeavour to disturb your household as little as possible, Monsieur Valjean. I do, however, request that I may use your library on occasion, if I am not needed at the headquarters.”

“Of course,” Valjean nods. “My daughter, Cosette, will fetch the key for you.”

“Thank you. I shall go upstairs, unpack a little,” Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy says, and Éponine wonders at how things have shifted, at how Valjean, who holds his authority in this house so lightly in his hands, lets things unfold with a kind smile, is suddenly at the beck and call of this young man who looks as though a stiff breeze would giggle and sweep him off his feet. He must be tough, though, she thinks, if he’s been fighting. He doesn’t look like he could hold his own against any of her friends, but she’s learned not to doubt the power of appearances and of hiding behind masks. Sometimes, pretences are the only things that keep you alive.

He clicks his heels again, and he and the silent aide make their way up the staircase, boots echoing. Cosette’s eyes follow him, wide and watchful. Valjean turns to go back into his study, pausing to kiss his daughter’s forehead.

“It will only be for a little while,” he murmurs.

**IV**

The village settles into being occupied. After the initial spate of posters standing guard outside the town hall screaming FORBIDDEN HAND YOUR GUNS IN FIGHTING FOR THE RESISTANCE IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH IT IS FORBIDDEN TO BE OUT BETWEEN 9PM AND 6AM and a whole host of other little daily necessaries of living in a homeland that is not your own, a homeland of some other people that you have squashed beneath the boots of your soldiers, there is a sigh of relief, a relaxation. It’s not as bad as everyone fears. It’s good for the economy. They buy things none of the locals have time or money for anymore. The soldiers are young, many of them handsome, all of them polite and very accountable to their commanding officers. They flirt with the women with varying degrees of success. The girls giggle and bat their eyelashes right back, some of the braver ones sneaking into the graveyard to steal kisses late at night. Some of the married women laugh and roll their eyes, others scowl and think of their own sons, running through the night or locked in prisoner of war camps, hungry and terrified, and curse these young German sons who are just as far from home.

A couple of them have tried it on with Éponine, despite her maid’s dress, her sharp edges, her elbows and knees and missing teeth. One of them tried to take her bucket of water from her, the way they all do for the village girls, but she’d raised her eyebrow and given him the sort of acid look she used to bring her younger brothers into line with, and he’d swallowed and backed off, ribbed by his mates. Another time, someone had slipped a hand around her waist when she’d been carrying vegetables back to the house, singing off-key – she’d hissed and flailed and tried to slap him, but he’d danced back out of reach, laughing. Now they treat her like a stray cat, not quite a woman; half of them give her a wide berth, the other half joke and tease, attempt to cajole her closer. She laughs at them, inside, their too-innocent smiles, their bright youth, shining like a penny amidst the dirt and grime of the war. Just kids, she thinks to herself from her lofty vantage point of twenty-two years, twelve of which have been spent scavenging on the streets. Only children, at the end of the day, despite all they’ve been through.

The one who is most definitely _not_ a child is their German, Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy. The girls who live around the market square gather at the fountain when Éponine is there –

“he’s got a French name, that’s so strange, why’s a Frenchman invading his own country?”

“he’s so handsome, what’s he like, Éponine?”

“he’s a lieutenant, that means he makes decisions, it’s more of a sin, you know, to sleep with an officer. The privates just follow orders, just like our boys, they’re not actually _bad_ you know…”

“shut up, Magnon, just because _you’re_ screwing your way around the whole German army doesn’t mean _everyone_ is,”

“oh just because no-one ever looks at _you_ since you left Paris, _Favourite,_ ” –

“’e’s quiet,” Éponine tells them, shrugging one shoulder. “Keeps to ‘imself. Sometimes ‘e walks in the garden, but apart from that ‘e’s in his room or the library.”

What she doesn’t say: “or making eyes at Cosette.”

Cosette is beautiful, she knows this, dainty and sweet and kind and everything Éponine had wanted to be before survival stole her dreams and ripped away everything that wasn’t food, shelter, or avoiding a beating. Cosette follows her father’s advice, barely speaks to Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy, but Éponine sees the way Cosette glances at him from under her eyelashes, blushes whenever he says something to her. For his part, he seems equally smitten, gazing at her when he thinks no-one is looking. Something Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy is yet to learn: the shadows have eyes, the shadows are always watching. Valjean goes out to visit his tenants and do his good deeds – even the war hasn’t tainted that man’s soul – and Cosette sits in the garden, weeds and cares for her flowers. Conveniently, Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy isn’t needed at headquarters, and so finds himself on a bench, paying more attention to Cosette than to the book open on his lap. Éponine sees everything.

Another thing Éponine doesn’t say: sometimes, she lies awake in bed at night, and wonders what it would be like if Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy were to look at her the same way he looks at Cosette. How would it feel?

**V**

What would her friends say, if they knew she had a German officer in her house making eyes at her employer’s daughter? Assassination, perhaps, sabotage, more likely. Éponine is not her friends, and she still doesn’t know how she feels about Cosette, but there is a debt nagging at the edges of her brain, a debt she is determined to pay. She corners Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy on the stairs one morning before Cosette is awake.

“Stay away from ‘er,” she says, fierce and quiet, trying not to pay attention to how close he is, two steps below her but perfectly on eye level, dark haired and dark eyed and possibly the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. Her heart thunders.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been watchin’ you. Cosette ain’t one of your little flings. Leave ‘er _alone._ ”

He just blinks at her. Valjean’s office door opens. Éponine hefts her basket of laundry up her hip and scurries back down the stairs.

**VI**

Cosette sneaks into Éponine’s room, late at night, her braid loose over one shoulder. Éponine is sitting in her bed, struggling through a book. Somewhere, in the ghosts of history long passed away, a dark-haired little girl is throwing a ragged doll into the fire. A scrawny, dirty child with hair that could have been curly and clean, once-upon-a-time, knows better than to cry.

“What?” Éponine asks, a little belligerent at the intrusion.

“I think I’m in love with him.”

“You’re so _stupid._ ”

To her credit, Cosette doesn’t flinch. She sits down on the end of Éponine’s bed, draws her feet up under her. “I can’t help falling in love. That’s the point of it.”

“You read too many silly novels.”

“You don’t read _enough_ silly novels. What is that?”

Éponine holds up the cover: “The Social Contract,” Cosette says. “Really?”

“I’m smarter than I look. One of my old political friends recommended it to me before ‘e got drafted.”

Cosette doesn’t rise to the mention of Éponine’s friends. Secretly (knowing she shouldn’t be so uncharitable) she wonders whether they were a figment of Éponine’s imagination. If not for the grainy photograph of five men propped on Éponine’s wonky dresser, one of them looking as though he’d leapt, halo and all, out of a stained-glass window, she’d definitely believe them made-up. “I’m still in love with him. He’s a poet, you know. He left me a book of his work under a bench. It’s so beautiful, I can’t quite believe it’s true.”

“’e’s a German,” Éponine says staunchly, trying to focus on the words, to ignore the way her stomach lurches, her heart stings a little. It’s not like it was _ever_ going to happen, she thinks, but a girl can dream. “’e’s not right for you, Cosette.”

“And who is right for me?”

Éponine hums for a second. “I ‘ad a friend called Monsieur Combeferre, back in Paris. You and ‘im woulda been lovely together. ‘e was so smart, and so kind. You need someone like that. Not a German Ober what’s-‘is-face.”

Cosette tosses her braid to the other shoulder, petulant. “Just because he’s on the other side of a war doesn’t make him _bad,_ Éponine.”

“Maybe not generally. If you’d met ‘im without a war on, there woulda been no problem at all. But there is a war on. You ain’t one of those silly village girls, Cosette, you should know better.”

“Sometimes I wish I was one of them,” Cosette murmurs. Éponine turns a page of her book.

**VII**

The rug of history is made up of the following threads: one unwed mother with a good-for-nothing American lover, two little girls, one dark-haired and pretty and spoiled, one mousy and silent and poor, one factory owner with a somewhat murky past, a pair of scoundrels masquerading as honest innkeepers, and a dogged policeman, obsessed with the rule of law.

It gets messy very quickly.

**VIII**

Cosette hides the notebook of Marius’ poetry under her pillow, reads through it every time she snatches a moment to herself, feeling her heart skip between her ribs.

The lines send a happy flush sliding fingers up her spine, over her shoulders. They see each other in the hallway, and in the garden. When Cosette is sure Éponine is inside, doing her chores or chatting to Toussaint, she sits with Marius on the bench, so close she can nearly feel the flutter of his breaths. Their hands brush. One summer afternoon, he turns his face and kisses her, very slowly as though she is a little bird who will take fright and fly away if he moves too fast.

Something he learns: Cosette is not a bird. She kisses him back.

**IX**

Éponine starts listening to the Free French on the radio, quietly, in the kitchen late at night when Toussaint has gone home, and the family are abed. Enjolras and Combeferre would want her to, she thinks. Sometimes Valjean comes to join her, and they sit in silence, wondering what the world has come to, trying to reconcile the quiet, polite German they have in their home with the machine that drags entire families out of history and deposits them god-knows-where, that kills and maims and tortures.

**IX**

“I don’t _care_ about the war!” Cosette shrills at Éponine, who stands, hands on her hips, scowling. “I _love_ him!”

Valjean is out. Valjean is often out, nowadays. He doesn’t see Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy as a threat, anymore, not after three months of polite conversation and avoidance. In any case, he knows Éponine is a wild thing and more than capable of defending Cosette should the need arise. It’s no accident he decided to offer her a job, when charity wouldn’t work. He came across her outside their house, the night they were nearly robbed, holding her own against three men, vicious and snarling and bleeding under the rain of their fists. He’d hauled the men off her, sent them running and turned to see a skinny woman with a face that rang bells in his memory, her eye swelling up and her stick-like arms patterned with bruises.

“I nearly ‘ad them,” she’d said, sticking her chin up.

“Of course,” Valjean had replied, wondering at this woman who seemed more wolf than person in the moonlight spilling down from the arch of the night-sky. “But you are hurt. Please. Come inside, rest a little.”

She’d given him the side-eye, rustled her ragged skirt and cocked a hip. “Sure that’s all you want, M’sieur?”

The realization had steamed into him like a freight train, and he’d stared at her in horror, searching for his words. Eventually: “Not for me, Mademoiselle. You are my daughter’s age, you shouldn’t have to do that.”

She’d shrugged. “Gotta eat somehow, M’sieur. I ‘ad better be off…” she’d taken a few steps away, then stumbled, and would have crashed to her knees if Valjean had not lunged forward to catch her.

“You can go when my daughter has helped tend your wounds and you’ve had some food,” Valjean had said. “How does the love of God abide in someone who ignores those in need?”

Éponine hadn’t responded, her eyes shut and her breathing shallow. Valjean had sighed and carried her into the house.

“I don’t _care_ if you love ‘im!” Éponine snaps back. “And you _should_ care about the war, about the things they’re doin’. The Germans are killin’ our people, takin’ people away. They are _not_ our friends. At the end of it all, do you want everyone in the village to think you’re a German’s whore?”

Cosette recoils. “You…” then, “all of the girls in the village are doing it!”

“Yes, but they’re common, they’re like me, and they ain’t _screwing_ officers!”

“I’m not _screwing_ anyone!”

“Might as well be,” Éponine’s voice is scathing, and she turns to go. Cosette shakes at the bottom of the stairs, whether from anger or from the history rising from the deep, malevolent and icy. She’s seen the way Éponine’s eyes follow Marius too, the thin set of her mouth. There’s the war, and there’s Marius. The two things are separate in her head. Why is she the only one who sees it?

**X**

War and love are never separate. That is something Éponine knows too well, something that Cosette learns quickly, one sticky August morning. Two villages over, there is an incident; a farmer shoots a German officer, and it’s like the world turns upside down. Suddenly the laughter at the fountain, the quiet moments hiding in the orchard with Marius, kissing and talking and wondering what life will be like when the war is over, all of this is ripped away from her. Éponine’s right – the Germans are invaders, they’re _occupiers,_ they’re not friends or lovers or anything but strangers walking over a seething, conquered land. The mayor two towns over has been shot, because they didn’t find the culprit. The region has been turned upside down looking for him – they had soldiers from Bussy in their village, co-ordinating the search. Cosette had seen a tall, blonde Oberleutnant talking to Marius in the market square when she’d been visiting her friend, the two of them grim-faced with their hands on their guns. Marius had overseen the search, the ripping apart of people’s houses, looking for the farmer, the killer. This is _war,_ Éponine’s voice reminds her, loud and echoing in Cosette’s head. She barely makes it into the safety of the garden before she starts to cry, the scent of jasmine thickening her head.

She’s there for hours. Later in the night, Marius comes to join her, sits on the other side of the bench. She doesn’t look at him.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “If I had any choice, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

“I _know,_ ” Cosette chokes, her resolve to be aloof, to treat them as occupiers, [he is an _occupier,_ it doesn’t _matter_ if you love him] crumbling into dust that coats the roof of her mouth. “This is what makes it so… _why_? Why do people do this to each other? Why can’t everyone just be _kind_ and _happy_?”

He slides close then, wraps an arm around her and pulls her head to his shoulder. She takes handfuls of his uniform, presses her face to the rough cloth, breathes in the smell of him. He won’t tell her, he thinks, not tonight, when she’s so upset.

**XI**

“What’s ‘appening?” Éponine asks, meeting an aide she knows on the stairs. She flattens herself on the bannister to allow him to pass.

“Been redeployed, that’s what,” he tells her. “Russia.”

 _Good bloody riddance,_ Éponine thinks, ignoring the pang when she realises this means she’ll never see them again, Hans who always teases her at the fountain, and Carl with his enormous moustache and stumbling French, and of course, Oberleutnant Marius Pontmercy with the smiles he saves just for Cosette, and his quiet politeness towards everyone else. She’s become used to having men around again. It’ll be strange, when they’re gone. There’s no harm in thinking that.

**XII**

Marius leaves for Russia. Éponine finds Cosette crying in her bedroom, red-eyed and trembling, and something softens inside of her. How has it turned out that ugly little Cosette with her snotty nose and dirty hands and scared curve of her shoulders is so weak? Surely the childhood hardships Éponine’s family used to heap on Cosette’s back have toughened her, laid the foundations for coping with misfortune, helped her be strong enough to deal with any pain life might throw at her? Éponine’s managed, after all, and she was the most loved, coddled child to ever walk the cobbled streets of Montfermeil.

Something Éponine does not realise: there are many different kinds of strength.

**XIII**

Some notes on an ending: there are letters. Marius to Cosette, Cosette to Marius, until they peter out in May of 1941. Cosette doesn’t cry this time. It’s war, she thinks. I was daft to think it wouldn’t touch us. He might be dead, but life goes on.

Éponine joins the resistance, when it’s clear that the war is going nowhere in a hurry and there are things the Germans are doing which never see the light of day. One day, she stopped when she is cycling, ostensibly to take something to one of the farms Monsieur Valjean manages, her braid loose, hat on, cheeks ruddy and sun-tanned from a summer outdoors.

“What have you got in your panniers, Mademoiselle Éponine?” the German asks. He’s bored, she can see it in the lines of his face, the sparkle of his eyes.

She beams at him, missing teeth and all. “Explosives. We’re going to blow you sky high.”

He laughs, waves her through. “Nice try, love. Off you go.”

“Thank you,” she calls over her shoulder, pedalling off quickly to disguise the rattle of detonators and wires hidden beneath a cursory layer of vegetables.

Several of Monsieur Valjean’s tenants are taken away. He gets quieter and sadder, spending hours in the church, or in his office. Éponine and Cosette worry about him, but then – what can be done? The war drags its feet, there are explosions, arrests, beatings in the street. Magnon falls pregnant three times in four years and has two children by two different German fathers. The village hunkers down under food shortages. The years tick over…

And then, quite suddenly, it is over.

Magnon is beaten up by some of the village women. German whore! They cry, kicking her, as her little children scream.

Éponine, scarred and burned from a few too many close encounters with the German secret services, teaches herself how to breathe again.

Three years later, Cosette and Marius meet again in England. Nothing has changed. Time ticks on, and slowly, the war is forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was very much inspired by two incredible books: Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky and Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba. It's not quite a crossover with the former, but inspired by it, and the scene with Eponine and the explosives actually happened (documented in the latter book) - the Germans didn't believe a pretty young woman would be working against them, and just took it as banter. I would recommend both books highly to anyone who is interested! :)
> 
> tumblr with me: @barefoot-pianist


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